The Verbal Communication of Emotion: Introduction …sfussell.hci.cornell.edu/pubs/Manuscripts/Ch1_Fussell.pdf · CHAPTER 1 The Verbal Communication of Emotion: Introduction and Overview1

CHAPTER 1

The Verbal Communication of Emotion: Introduction and Overview1

Susan R. Fussell

Carnegie Mellon University

The interpersonal communication of emotional states is fundamental to both everyday

and clinical interaction. One's own and others' affective experiences are frequent topics of

everyday conversations, and how well these emotions are expressed and understood is important

to interpersonal relationships and individual well-being. Similarly, in therapeutic contexts,

progress depends on, among other things, how articulately the client expresses his or her

emotions and how well the therapist understands and responds to these expressions. In this

volume we take an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the verbal communication of

emotion in a variety of contexts.

All languages provide speakers with an array of verbal strategies for conveying emotions.

In English, for example, we have an abundance of both literal (e.g., irked, angry, furious), and

figurative (e.g., flipping one's lid, blow a gasket) expressions which can be used to describe a

theoretically infinite number of emotional states (e.g., Bush, 1973; Clore, Ortony, & Foss, 1987;

Davitz, 1969; Johnson-Laird & Oatley, 1989; Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988; Ortony, Clore, &

Foss, 1987). Studies of language use in psychotherapy likewise are replete with examples of

literal and figurative expressions for emotions (e.g., Angus, 1996; Davitz, 1969; Davitz &

Mattis, 1964; Ferrara, 1994; Karp, 1996; McMullen & Conway, 1996; Pollio & Barlow, 1975;

Siegelman, 1990).

1 To appear in S. R. Fussell, Ed., The Verbal Communication of Emotion: Interdisciplinary

Perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Fussell: Introduction and Overview 2

This book pulls together new research and theory on the verbal communication of

emotions by a international, cross-disciplinary group of recognized experts in affective

communication, with the goal providing readers with a comprehensive view of current research

and fertilizing cross-disciplinary interaction. Topics include analyses of literal and figurative

expressions for emotions, studies of the use of metaphor and other figurative expressions for

emotion, analysis of the role of conversational partners in creating emotional meaning, and the

effects of culture on emotional communication. In the remainder of this introductory chapter, I

first describe the scope of the book; then, I briefly summarize the chapters in each section of the

book; finally, I describe several themes and issues that arise throughout the book and outline

some areas for future research.

The Scope of the Book

The field of emotional communication is very large, and comprehensive coverage of all

approaches to this topic would far exceed the page limits of this book. In this section I briefly

describe the way the scope of the volume was restricted.

Verbal Communication of Emotions.

First, we have limited contributions to those which deal explicitly with the verbal

communication of emotions. It is well established that humans use a wide range of nonverbal

and paralinguistic mechanisms to express emotion, including facial expressions, gestures,

posture, tone of voice, and the like. Over the past several decades, substantial progress has been

made in understanding how emotions are expressed through these nonverbal mechanisms (see,

e.g., papers in Barrett, 1998; Ekman and Davidson, 1994, Feldman & Rime, 1991; Philippot,

Feldman, & Coats, 1999; Russell & Fernandez-Dols, 1997; Scherer & Ekman, 1984).

Important as these modalities are, however, paralinguistic and nonverbal channels in and

of themselves are insufficient for expressing the full range of human emotional experiences for

several reasons. First, although nonverbal cues can indicate what general class of emotions a

person is feeling, they typically do not provide detailed information about that person's


emotional state. By seeing that someone is crying, for instance, we might assume that they are

sad; by the extent of sobbing we might even be able to infer the intensity of the sadness. But the

tears in and off themselves provide no information about the particular experience of sadness --

for example, the cognitions that go along with the sadness (e.g., "I have no money" vs. "I'm

lonely") or the circumstances that lead up to feeling sad (e.g., "I lost my job" vs. "my dog just

died"). As the contributions to this book show, verbal descriptions of emotional states can

provide quite precise information about the specific form of an emotion, such as anger,

depression, or happiness, that a person is experiencing.

In addition, there is a range of circumstances under which people talk about emotions that

occurred in the past. As Rime (this volume) shows, people often talk about their past emotional

experiences with friends and family. Past experiences are also a major topic of discussion in

therapeutic contexts, in self-help groups, and other specialized settings. Furthermore, people

talk about others' emotional experiences -- people they know, public figures, characters in books

and movies, and the like (e.g., Fussell & Moss, 1998). In all these cases, people are

communicating about emotions and feelings they are not personally experiencing at the time of

the conversation, or at least not experiencing with the same intensity as the original event.

Because many nonverbal behaviors are signs rather than intentional signals of emotional state,

they have limited value in communicating about emotions one is not experiencing at the time of

communication.

Interdisciplinary Approach

Second, the volume takes an explicitly interdisciplinary approach. Valuable insights into

the verbal communication of emotion have come from workers in a number of fields, including

linguistics, conversational analysis, ethnomethodology, sociolinguistics, anthropological

linguistics, communications, and social, cognitive, and clinical psychology (see, e.g., papers in

Andersen & Gueerero, 1998; Athanasiadou & Tabakowska, 1998; Niemeier & Dirven, 1997;

Russell, 1987). Each of these areas, through its theoretical and empirical approach, offers


unique insights into affective communication. The interdisciplinary foundation of the book is

evident in several interrelated aspects of the contributions: the level of analysis used to examine

verbal phenomena, the author's empirical approaches, and the context of their investigations.

Multiple levels of analysis. The contributors focus on emotional expression at several

different levels of analysis. Some focus on specific linguistic devices such as the literal

emotional lexicon (e.g., English terms such as angry, sad, happy and the like) and/or the use of

conventional metaphors, idioms, and other figures of speech (e.g., hit the roof, down in the

dumps, on Cloud 9). Others examine descriptions of emotions in actual conversations, looking

at, among other things, the creation of novel metaphors for emotions. Yet others examine

language use at a dialogue level, considering how the emotion is expressed through a series of

utterances, looking at the partners' influence, and so forth. Finally, some contributors look at

verbal descriptions of emotions over a series of interactions, noting how these descriptions may

change with repeated discussion of the emotional incident.

Multiple empirical approaches. The contributors also vary in the methodologies they use

to approach their subject. The linguistically-oriented contributors analyze the meaning and use

of conventional expressions for emotions. They consider, for example, how literal and figurative

expressions for emotion concepts are expressed in different languages. Other contributors

combine quantitative and qualitative analyses of naturally-occurring descriptions of emotions,

for example by counting and classifying the number of metaphorical emotion phrases in a

dialogue corpus. Contributors with a conversational analytic orientation take a purely

qualitative approach, looking closely at how emotion are raised, responded to, and worked

through by in segments of discourse. Lastly, some contributors take an experimental

psychological approach, allowing them to have control over many of the factors hypothesized to

influence the production and comprehension of affective language. Each of these approaches has

its strengths and weaknesses. By bringing them together in one volume we hope to stimulate

greater cross-disciplinary interaction that may lead to converging evidence about the verbal

communication of emotions.


Multiple research settings. Finally, the contributors focus on how emotions are expressed

in a variety of communicative settings. Those taking a linguistic approach consider emotional

expressions in the abstract. Others study natural conversations between friends, relatives, and

strangers. A number of chapters examine language use in psychotherapeutic contexts, building

on previous work by Labov and Fanshel (1977), the contributors in Russell (1987), Siegelman

(1990) and others. Finally, some authors pursue their research in the laboratory, where they can

carefully control variables such as the number and characteristics of communicators, the topic of

conversation, and so forth, to assess the effects of these variables on affective communication.

International group of contributors

Finally, I have tried to bring together an international group of contributors. As many of

the contributions illustrate, the communication of emotions is shaped by language and culture in

a variety of ways. To avoid creating theories that are too heavily rooted in the English language,

contributions were solicited from investigators in a number of different countries (Australia,

Belgium, Canada, Germany, Hungary, and the United State). Many of these contributors

examine affective language in their own and other native languages in addition to English,

thereby potentially broadening our scope of understanding.

It should be noted that space limits precluded the inclusion of chapters from every

prominent researcher in each of the fields we have mentioned. Each contributor has provided an

extensive reference section with pointers to other important research in their respective fields.

Overview of Chapters

Chapters are organized into three broad areas: background theory, figurative language

use, and social/cultural aspects of emotional communication. Section I, Theoretical

Foundations, consists of three chapters which look at fundamental issues in the verbal

communication of emotion.


Cliff Goddard (Chapter 2, Explicating Emotions Across Languages and Cultures: A

Semantic Approach) discusses a fundamental problem in the study of verbal communication of

emotions: semantic differences across languages and cultures. For example, he observes that

lexical terms in other languages that are roughly similar to our words anger and depression can

have subtle differences in meaning. As a result, interpreting cross-cultural research on emotional

language is problematic. He suggests that instead of glossing over semantic differences between

languages, we consider them part of the phenomena to be investigated. Goddard takes an

approach known as "natural semantic metalanguage" (NSM), originated by Wierzbicka (1992,

1999). In the NSM approach, word meanings are specified using a small set of universal

semantic concepts (e.g., people, good/bad, think, feel). Unlike specific emotion terms, he argues,

these semantic universals are found in all languages and thus can form metalanguage to describe

specific emotion words in specific languages. In applying NSM to emotion terms, feelings

associated with a specific emotion (e.g., "sadness") are linked to a typical cognitive scenario

(e.g., "something bad has happened") using the semantic metalanguage. Goddard gives a variety

of examples of how NSM can be applied to emotion terms in English and a number of other

languages including Polish, Malayan, and Japanese. Next, Goddard turns his attention to cultural

scripts about expressing emotions. He again applies the NSM strategy of using a small set of

universal primitive features to characterize rules for expressing emotions in different cultures.

Goddard's chapter is an elegant demonstration of the strengths of the NSM approach.

Sally Planalp and Karen Knie (Chapter 3, Integrating verbal and nonverbal emotion(al)

messages) focus on how verbal and nonverbal cues to emotion might be theoretically integrated

(see also Planalp, 1999). They observe that the complexity of this issue has lead to a "divide and

conquer" strategy in which investigators tend to focus on individual cues (e.g., facial

expressions, intonation, verbal messages) in isolation from the others. Although this strategy has

lead to insights into emotional communication, it has not increased our understanding of how

people integrate nonverbal and verbal cues when expressing and understanding emotions in

actual conversations. Planalp and Knie outline O'Keefe's (1988) Message Design Logics and


explicate the implications of this model for integrating verbal and nonverbal cues to emotion. In

Expressive Logic, emotions are viewed as entities that build up and escape or leak out of the

body in various ways, including nonverbal behaviors, paralinguistic phenomena, and verbal

utterances. In Conventional Logic, emotional messages are sent, via one or a combination of

cues, to a receiver. The focus is on the channels used to send affective messages and the extent

to which the recipient understands the message. In Rhetorical Logic, emotion and

communication are viewed as activities oriented toward the achievement of social goals.

Planalp and Knie describe in detail how different conceptualizations of communication affect

researchers' choices of topics and paradigms used to investigate emotional communication.

In Chapter 4, How to do Emotions with Words: Emotionality in Conversations, Reinhard

Fiehler outlines his approach to studying the relationship between emotion and language

(Fiehler, 1990), in which emotions are viewed as by nature interactionally-constituted. Fiehler

describes three types of emotion rules: manifestation rules, which govern the type of emotions

and manner in which they are displayed in a particular situation; correspondence rules, which

specify appropriate responses to others' emotions, and coding rules for identifying instances of

emotions in an interaction. He distinguishes among the manifestation of emotions, the

interpretation of emotions, and the interactional processing or negotiation of emotions. He also

distinguishes between expressions of emotion and their thematization, or explicit verbalization,

within the content of the conversation. Fiehler's model is noteworthy in several regards: First,

he carefully considers a wide range of ways in which emotions may be communicated, including

nonverbal behaviors, paralinguistic phenomena, word selections, conversational dynamics (e.g.,

interruptions and overlaps), and the like. Second, he describes in detail a number of verbal

strategies for thematizing emotions, including verbal labels and descriptions, figurative

expressions, and descriptions of circumstances surrounding an emotional event. He discusses

how thematizations can focus on different elements in the emotional experience, including the

experiencer, type and intensity of emotion and the dynamics of the experience. Third, Fiehler

specifies a six-stage methodology for analyzing the relationship between emotion and


communication using his theoretical framework and then analyzes two excerpts from

psychotherapy sessions to illustrate the value of his approach. Fiehler's model (explained in

detail in his 1990 book) was translated into English specifically for this volume in order to make

it more accessible to emotion researchers.

Section II, Using Figurative Language to Express Emotions, is comprised of four

chapters that look at the role of metaphor and other figures of speech in emotional

communication in both everyday language and psychotherapeutic contexts.

In Chapter 5 (Emotion Concepts: Social Constructivism and Cognitive Linguistics)

Zoltán Kövecses sketches out his cognitive linguistic approach to the communication of emotion

(e.g., Kövecses, 1996; 2000). He starts by contrasting the cognitive linguistic view of emotion

language with that of Harre's "emotionology" (Harre, 1986). He notes that Harre and his fellow

social constructivists have tended to focus on literal emotion terms such as anger, joy and

sadness, and on terms for distinct emotions rather than classes of words for the same emotion

(e.g., angry, irate, irritated). Kövecses then describes the cognitive linguistic approach, in

which particular expressions for emotions are seen as reflecting deeper conceptual structures

which are themselves metaphorical in nature and represent a folk theory of emotion (Lakoff &

Johnson, 1980). Kövecses discusses at length, using many examples, how a large number of

conventional metaphorical phrases for emotions (e.g., burst with tears, flipped one's lid) can be

described in terms of an EMOTION AS FORCE conceptual metaphor. He argues that both

causes and consequences of emotions are conceptualized metaphorically as forces. Kövecses

provides examples showing striking similarities in the conceptual metaphors underlying

emotional phrases in different languages and suggests this similarity might stem from similarities

in how emotions are experienced in each of these cultures.

Gibbs, Leggitt, and Turner (Chapter 6, What's Special about Figurative Language in

Emotional Communication) also address the role of metaphor and other figures of speech in

emotional communication. Gibbs et al. first consider the nature of communicative intentions in

metaphor production. They suggest that speakers may use metaphor to convey a variety of


subtle meanings, not all of which need have been consciously intended at the time of production.

These subtle meanings allow speakers to describe their emotional experiences in more detail than

would be possible using terms in the literal emotion lexicon. Like Kövecses, they argue that part

of the communicative potential of metaphor stems from the relationship between a particular

figurative expression and the deeper conceptual metaphor with which it is associated. Specific

emotional metaphors can be seen as reflecting particular phases or aspects of larger conceptual

metaphors (e.g., getting hot under the collar vs. hit the roof), and listeners use this relationship

between the two in understanding metaphorical meaning. Gibbs et al. demonstrate in a series of

laboratory studies how using different types of figurative language (e.g., irony, metaphor,

overstatement, understatement) to express the same class of emotions (e.g., anger) lead different

interpretations about speakers' intentions and emotional states (e.g., how angry the speaker is).

Their findings suggest, among other things, that speakers can use figurative language

strategically to express subtle nuances of emotional states.

The next two papers in this section focus specifically on metaphor use in

psychotherapeutic contexts. In Chapter 7, Conflict, Coherence and Change in Brief

Psychotherapy: A Metaphor Theme Analysis, Lynne Angus and Yifaht Korman examine how

spoken metaphors and the underlying metaphorical frameworks they represent change over the

course of therapy. Angus and Korman suggest that metaphors used in psychotherapy reflect

clients' views of themselves, their life circumstances, and the world. Client metaphors may also

reflect the nature of the therapeutic relationship. By tracing metaphor use through a series of

sessions between a particular client and therapist, they argue, one should be able to identify how

clients' views change dynamically over time. To investigate their hypotheses, Angus and

Korman analyzed all messages between two clients and their respective therapists over the

course of fifteen or more sequential sessions. They examined the core metaphorical themes

underlying clients' metaphors and other figures of speech as psychotherapeutic progress was

made. In particular, they focus on the use of expressions falling under one theme,

RELATIONSHIP AS CONFLICT. Angus and Korman found that these metaphors based on this


theme could be further classified into three subcategories: FIGHTING AND WINNING,

FIGHTING BUT LOSING, and NEGOTIATING. They found that over the course of therapy,

the subcategory of metaphorical phrases shifted from FIGHTING BUT LOSING to FIGHTING

AND WINNING, although the progression was not linear. The findings highlight the

importance of metaphor in therapeutic contexts and suggest that therapists might gain from

paying closer attention to client's metaphors. The findings also provide a nice example of how

the language people use to describe specific emotional events can change over time as their

understanding of these events evolves through therapy.

In Chapter 8, Conventional Metaphors for Depression, Linda McMullen and John

Conway focus on metaphors for depression. They first provide a historical perspective on the

terms depression and melancholia and describe the historical bases for several conceptual

metaphors for depression. They note that the conceptual metaphors of DEPRESSION IS

DARKNESS and DEPRESSION IS WEIGHT date back to ancient Greece. McMullen and

Conway draw upon data collected from a study of clients' depression-related metaphors during

psychotherapy sessions to show the current pervasiveness of these two metaphors. In addition,

they found a third conceptual metaphor, DEPRESSION IS DESCENT, accounted for more than

90% of the depression-related metaphors in their corpus. Clients described themselves as down,

hitting a low, sinking, in the dumps, and the like. McMullen and Conway go on to show how the

DEPRESSION IS DESCENT metaphor fits into a broader up-down spatial framework pervasive

in Western cultures, in which "up" is associated with positive properties and "down" is

associated with negative properties. Interestingly, they suggest that the very act of speaking

about depression via metaphors that fall within the DEPRESSION IS DESCENT conceptual

framework, because of its inherent negativity in Western cultures, might serve to worsen client's

feelings of worthlessness and despair.

Section III, Social and cultural processes in emotional communication, brings together

four chapters that look at ways emotions are embedded in larger socio-culture processes.


Rime, Corsini, and Herbette (Chapter 9, Emotion, Verbal Expression, and the Social

Sharing of Emotion) look at emotional communication from a somewhat different angle than the

previous chapters. Rime et al. study when and why people choose to share their emotional

experiences with others after they have occurred. The stress is on patterns of sharing, rather than

on the specific words used to share an experience. Rime and his collaborators have conducted a

large series of studies of the dynamics of social sharing, beginning with studies of people's

autobiographical accounts of sharing and moving to laboratory experiments in which they

cleverly manipulate the type of emotional experience a participant undergoes and measure the

extent to which this experience is shared with others. A number of notable findings have

resulted from this body of work, including the repeated findings that people share the vast

majority of their emotional experiences, often very soon after they occur, that they often share

these experiences with more than one other person, and that they are especially likely to share

more intense emotions. They find that personality characteristics have little effect on the extent

of sharing, but that there are gender, age, and culture-related differences in sharing patterns.

Also of note was the observed prevalence of secondary sharing, wherein the original recipient of

sharing passes the emotion experience on to a third party. Rime et al. discuss the possible

psychological and social functions of sharing emotions, including keeping a community up to

date on the experiences of its members, and allowing the sharer to work through his/her

experiences and search for meaning for emotional events.

In Chapter 10, The language of fear: The communication of intergroup attitudes in

conversations about HIV and AIDS., Pittam and Gallois examine the language used to express

fear, with a focus on language about fears rather than expressions of imminent fear. Their

approach (see also Gallois, 1993) is rooted in Tajfel's (1982) Social Identify Theory and other

theories of the effects of social category membership on perceptions of oneself and others.

Pittam and Gallois observe that the way AIDS has spread among certain social groups (e.g., male

homosexuals, intravenous drug users, prostitutes) has made social group memberships especially

salient in any discussions about this highly-feared illness. Pittam and Gallois focus on one social


category, gender, that they posit is salient in AIDS-related discussions.. They present a study of

single- and mixed-gender groups discussing the HIV/AIDS situation and safe sex. Content

analysis was used to examine all the fear-related words (e.g., worry, scare, shock, fear) generated

in the discussions. They analyzed the linguistic data in terms of what is feared, who fears, and

who is feared, and found that outgroups were often implicitly mentioned in discussions of who

was feared. The results illustrate how certain emotional topics of discussion can make

participants' social category memberships salient, and how these salient category memberships in

turn can affect how people communicate about the topic..

Chapter 11, Rewards and Risks of Exploring Negative Emotion: An Assimilation Model

Account, by Lara Honos-Webb, Linda Endres, Ayesha Shaikh, Elizabeth Harrick, James Lani,

Lynne Knobloch, Michael Surko, and William Stiles, addresses the impact of expressing

negative emotions on mental and physical health. They first describe their Assimilation Model

(Stiles, Elliott, Llewelyn, Firth-Cozens, Margison, Shapiro, & Hardy, 1990), in which client's

representations of negative or problematic experiences are hypothesized to move through a

number of stages, from unacknowledged to fully integrated and mastered. Honos-Webb et al.

describe two versions of the Assimilation model, one of which focuses on schema formation and

the other of which focuses on how people integrate different "voices". They then present two

cases studies of assimilation using excerpts from session transcripts to illustrate how clients'

affective language shifts as they come to assimilate their experiences. In the next section of the

paper, they report the results of a laboratory study of sharing emotions using a paradigm initiated

by Pennebaker (e.g., 1997). In this study, students wrote for 20 minutes each of four days about

their most traumatic emotional experience. In contrast to Pennebaker's previously findings, the

students who had the most assimilation also had the most health-care visits in the short but not

the long term. Honos-Webb and her colleagues speculate that the four day writing time might

have been long enough to enable participants to uncover previously suppressed or

unacknowledged emotional distress but failed to provide enough time or the proper supportive

context for them to work through these issues. Their findings suggest that the expression of


traumatic experiences is most beneficial when it occurs in a supportive conversational context

wherein people can learning coping strategies to assimilate these experiences.

In Chapter 12, Blocking emotions: The face of resistance, Kathleen Ferrara looks at the

phenomenon of resistance, or the holding back of emotions, in a psychotherapeutic context. As

in her earlier work (Ferrara, 1994), Ferrara uses a discourse-centered approach in which she

looks closely at detailed transcripts of actual therapy sessions to determine how both client and

therapist jointly construct resistance. She uses Labov and Fanshel's (1977) concepts of

Repeated Requests, with which therapists can ask clients to do something, and Put Offs, by

which clients can avoid meeting these requests. Ferrara describes discourse rules for making

and putting-off direct and indirect requests, and shows how components of these requests (e.g.,

listeners need for the action, need for the request, ability to do the action, willingness to do the

action, and so forth) can form the basis of put-offs. She provides a number of examples of

Repeated Requests and Put Offs and then examines the conversational dynamics of a long

sequence in which a client repeatedly puts off the therapist's request. The analyses show how the

way in which the therapist phrases the request (indirectly) enables the client to continue his

series of put-offs. Ferrara suggests that direct requests might lead to less resistance on the part of

clients. Her work demonstrates how one's communicative partner can influence the ways in

which emotions are expressed or (or fail to be expressed). She argues that by better

understanding how clients and therapists co-construct conversation, therapists should be able to

provide more effective therapy.

Themes and Issues for Future Research

As can be seen from the brief synopses above, contributors to this volume address a

variety of issues in the verbal communication of emotion. Taken together, the chapters provide

substantial insights into how people talk about affective experiences. In this section I outline

some broad questions that arise from this body of work and some areas for future research.


What is the nature of the relationship between verbal and nonverbalcommunication of emotion?

Although contributions to this volume were limited to those focusing predominantly on

the verbal communication of emotion, many chapters touch upon the impact of nonverbal and

paralinguistic cues as well. This can be seen, for example, in the therapy session excerpts

provided by Fiehler, Honos-Webb and colleagues, and Ferrara. In each case, nonverbal signs

such as sighs, laughs, and the like, are incorporated into the written transcript. It seems clear that

we, as readers of these transcripts, incorporate the transcribed nonverbal signs into our

understanding of the emotional dynamics of the sessions. As Goddard and Fiehler argue, our

interpretations of nonverbal signs may be shaped by cultural scripts specifying what behaviors

are expected in particular settings. Quite a bit is known about the role of different nonverbal and

paralinguistic cues to emotion (cf. (see, e.g., Ekman and Davidson, 1994, Feldman & Rime,

1991; Philippot, Feldman, & Coats, 1999; Russell & Fernandez-Dols, 1997; Scherer & Ekman,

1984). Yet, as Planalp and Knie point out, the ways in which we integrate nonverbal cues with

verbal utterances is still poorly understood. Their chapter provides a number of suggestions for

future research in this area.

An understanding of the ways verbal and nonverbal cues are integrated has become

especially relevant today, now that new technologies allow for communication via text-based

chat, email, and other media in which verbal communication is the primary channel of

communication (e.g., Walther & Burgoon, 1992; Kiesler, Siegel, McGuire, 1984; Rice & Love,

1987). The use of emoticons such as smiley faces to indicate nonverbal cues to emotion in text-

based media suggests that people believe that nonverbal cues are an important addition to their

words when expressing emotion. A better understanding of how people integrate verbal and

nonverbal cues in face-to-face settings would enable system designers to develop technologies to

support emotional communication among remotely distributed parties.

Two of the chapters suggest that the relationship between verbal and nonverbal cues to

affect may run deeper than their simultaneous use to express an ongoing emotional state. Both


Kovecses and Gibbs et al. provide examples showing that many metaphors for emotional states

were originally rooted in bodily experiences (e.g., hot under the collar). Kovecses suggests that

the similarity of conceptual metaphors across cultures may stem from the universality of the

bodily components of emotional responses (e.g, getting flushed). The question thus arises as to

whether the actual experiencing of nonverbal signs of emotional states influences the figurative

expressions speakers choose to communicate those states.

What are the relationships among felt emotions, cognitions and affectivelanguage?

In part, an answer to the question of how verbal and nonverbal cues to emotion are

integrated may depend on the nature of the relationship between felt emotions and their verbal

communication. In some cases people talk about emotional experiences as they are happening,

whereas at other times they relate their own and others' past emotional experiences (Rime et al.).

The degree to which the original emotion is felt at the time of sharing may thus vary

substantially. Because nonverbal cues to emotion are often a byproduct of the actual experience

of an emotion, the ways these cues are integrated with verbal messages may differ depending on

the extent to which the emotion is felt at the time of the utterance. Another, almost Whorfian

(1956) angle on the emotion/language relationship is suggested at least indirectly by the chapters

by some of the chapters. For example, McMullen and Conway suggest that by speaking about

their emotions using the DEPRESSION IS DESCENT conceptual metaphor, people's feelings of

sadness might worsen. Thus, there may be a bi-directional relationship between felt emotions

and the verbal expression of these emotions which requires further investigation.

Likewise, a bi-directional relationship between cognition and emotional language is

suggested by the chapters on social sharing of emotions (Rime et al), resistance (Ferrara), and

assimilation (Honos-Web et al.). In each of these cases, it appears that expressing emotions to

others has, in at least some cases, positive benefits for the speaker's cognitive views of the

emotional circumstance. Honos-Webb and colleagues show, for example, how in a therapeutic

context descriptions of an emotional experience come to reflect clients' greater assimilation of


that experience. Angus and Korman show how changes over time in clients' selections of

metaphors from the RELATIONSHIPS ARE CONFLICT domain reflect changes in their

conceptualizations of their relationships. Furthermore, Ferrara and Rime et al. suggest that

failures to share emotions with others can, at least in some cases, lead to failure to resolve

negative experiences. Thus, another direction for future research would be to expand studies of

the relationships between affect and cognition (see, e.g., papers in Clark & Fiske, 1982; Eich et

al., 2000; Fiedler & Forgas, 1988; Izard, Kagan, & Zajonc, 1984) to the examination of

relationships among emotions, cognitions, and verbal affective communication.

To what extent are emotions and affective communication co-constructed byspeaking partners?

In the Rhetorical model described by Planalp and Knie, affective communication is

embedded in a social context which can shape its form, and this theme is addressed in a number

of the contributions to this volume. Honos-Webb and colleagues, for example, suggest that the

benefits of talking about emotions in their case studies stem in part from client's ability to work

the issues through with their therapist. Rime et al. also suggest that the sharing of emotions has

benefits by enabling people to work through their experiences. Conversational grounding (e.g.,

Clark, 1996) and perspective-taking (cf. Krauss and Fussell, 1996) models of communication

likewise suggest that how people formulate messages about emotional states will be influenced

by their partners' characteristics and responses.

One's communicative partner can influence affective communication in a number of

ways. First, as Rime points out, others' characteristics (particularly their relationship with the

speaker) is a determinant of who emotions will be shared with. In addition, as Pittam and

Gallois' contribution highlights, a partner's social category memberships can make the speaker

more aware of his or her own category memberships and thereby influence the way that an

emotion is discussed. Finally, Ferrara shows here and in her earlier book (Ferrara, 1994)

conversational partners' responses can impact how emotional messages are formulated.


A better understanding of the effects of conversational partners on affective

communication is thus another area for future research, especially in the light of the previous

section suggesting that there may be bi-directional relationships between how emotions are

expressed and people's experiences of emotion and cognitions about emotional events.

How does culture influence emotional experience and affective communication?

Most all of the chapters touch at least indirectly on the role of socio-cultural processes in

emotional communication. However, the impact of culture on emotional language remains

somewhat unclear. On the one hand, several chapters describe cultural differences. For example,

Goddard discusses the cultural embeddedness of the emotion lexicon as well as the role of

culture in displaying emotions, Fiehler notes that there are cultural differences in rules for

displaying emotions, responding to others' emotional displays, and interpreting emotions, Rime

and colleagues found differences in patterns of sharing emotions between Western and Eastern

cultures, and McMullen and Conway suggest that metaphors for depression are based in Western

conceptualizations of the self. On the other hand, Kovecses argues that many conceptual

metaphors for emotion are universal, perhaps because they are rooted in bodily manifestations of

emotional experiences that are likely to be fairly constant across cultures. The ways in which

culture shapes emotional expression are likely to be complex (cf. Kitayama & Markus, 1994) and

require further study.

Conclusion

This volume brings together an international, interdisciplinary group of researchers

focusing on the verbal communication of emotion. The contributions illustrate the value of

authors' respective theoretical and empirical approaches for an understanding of affective

language in both every day and clinical settings. Taken as a whole, the chapters provide a

comprehensive look at the current state of research on the use of language in affective

communication and suggest a number of interesting directions for future research.


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The Verbal Communication of Emotion: Introduction …sfussell.hci.cornell.edu/pubs/Manuscripts/Ch1_Fussell.pdf · CHAPTER 1 The Verbal Communication of Emotion: Introduction and Overview1